SIMON SMITH: We weren’t at our best but picked up the away-day win

Our fantastic start to the season continued with victory at Pocklington on Saturday.

Pock is always a tough place to go. We knew they’d come down from the league above and would represent a very tough challenge, and they did just that.
I think they’ll feel very aggrieved as they dominated for large parts and came away on the wrong end of the result.
We weren’t at our fluent best on Saturday for a number of reasons, I’d give some credit to Pock, but the referee also contributed to that.
The ruck wasn’t refereed at all well, which slowed the game down and didn’t suit us at all.
I believe the referee was up on an exchange from Northampton, which possibly contributed.
It was a very tough game but the lads dug deep and individual brilliance saw us to the win - whereas in our previous games this season it has been a team performance.
Tom Ratcliffe in particular had an excellent game, I believe he contributed to all of our tries from fly-half.
It was good to give Manning Smith a debut from the bench.
He got 20 to 25 minutes and showed some glimpses of ability and we look forward to seeing more from him as he settles into the club and the surroundings more.
Nino Cutino also made a return from injury unscathed and he’ll hopefully step that up when we host Driffield this weekend.
The derby games keep coming thick and fast and hopefully we’ll see another bumper crowd in at Silver Royd for this one - particularly as I know Driffield will bring a decent following with them.
I think the Govier brothers are playing some kind of tag-team challenge with me at the moment as we have Drew back after two weeks away, but Euan is away.
Jack Anderson is back in contention and we’ll be assessing Billy Parker.